Welcome to BWB’s first 2014 newsletter!

  

Reading runs through summer memories… and with those recollections come all those Christmas books bought at Parsons bookshop over the years. The February closure of ‘Parsons on Lambton Quay’ highlighted the significance of bookshops to this country. The Parsons family is preeminent amongst the many great New Zealand booksellers who have opened rich pathways into the world’s books. Bridget Williams

March

For BWB, the year starts with the release of BWB Texts in print. This snappy series of ‘born digital’ narratives started off in March 2013 with Paul Callaghan’s wonderful Luminous Moments. Since then we have published 11 BWB Texts in their native digital format – now Tom Rennie and the Texts team have created an elegant pocket-sized paperback format for our first Texts in print. Next Tuesday, Tom chairs a session in Writers Week at the New Zealand Festival, with Tracey Barnett, Hamish Campbell and Max Rashbrooke. Become a foundation subscriber for BWB Texts – see our website for more information.

April/May

Sorrows of a Century: Interpreting Suicide in New Zealand 1900–2000 is a profoundly moving account of loss and suffering. Thoroughly researched in New Zealand archives, it is an insightful assessment of psychiatry and psychology in the twentieth century.

The Chief Coroner, Judge Neil MacLean, writes: A work such as this performs a valuable function by giving an illuminating insight into what is really happening behind troubling statistics.

John Weaver is Distinguished University Professor at McMaster University, Canada. He is giving a number of public lectures in New Zealand, see panel to right. Sorrows of a Century is co-published with McGill-Queens University Press. 

Child Poverty in New Zealand will be published in late May. Jonathan Boston and Simon Chapple are amongst the country’s most respected researchers and writers on this critical topic, which is heading the list of New Zealanders’ concerns in 2014. Their timely book provides the most up-to-date information and analysis, and sets out to provide practical, achievable policies for the imperative task of addressing child poverty in New Zealand today.  Public lectures will be held in the main centres.  

Information on BWB events, lectures and books is regularly posted on www.bwb.co.nz.  

With good wishes from the BWB team, 

Bridget Williams Books
info@bwb.co.nz